Unrequited
by apple2011
Summary: After Beckett and Josh get married Castle slinks his feelings into the shadows. Hiding his feelings from her and unknown to him she does the same. However when he finds some solace in another broken hearted soul will Beckett realise what she missed? And will she be able to win Castle back before she loses him forever.
1. Chapter 1

Unrequited 

He has no idea how he does it, every day he walks into the Precinct to see her. Helps with the case and leaves. Knowing he will never take her home, never feel her love or even tell her how he feels.

She chose the other man, Josh in this case. He had hoped after she was shot that she would remember, go with him but instead the doctor and her got closer. They married six months later and he stood by watching the woman he love flutter away, into someone else's arms.

Yet he does it, for nine months he has. Working, loving and mixing the two in order to keep it a secret, while she goes home every night to another man.

"See you Castle," Kate brushed past him on the way out, she had dinner plans but he it had come to the point he kept silent about her plans. He did not want to know what they did; it made him feel even worse.

"See you Beckett," Rick replied politely as they went their separate ways. He towards his car and her to nothingness as far as he was concerned,

"Another day gone," he told himself, reaching inside his pockets for the keys. Then he checked is coat, his jacket and everywhere in between; he had forgotten.

"It's a bit early Castle," Esposito joked, bumping into the man in the hall,

"Well I like to get an early start to the day, that and my keys happen to be on Beckets' desk," he explained putting an end to the conversation somewhat quickly but here he was. He would go home, talk to his mother, and maybe even call Alexis. He knew he would have to move on eventually but he preferred not to think about it as he slipped into the darkened room he had solved many murders from.

"Ah," Rick announced aloud seeing the glint of his keys on the floor, he had been slightly worried someone would steal them but it seemed everything was fine. Then he heard a noise. A stifled sort of noise that made no sense to him, was someone upset? But he could see no one else around and more importantly who would choose a police station to cry in?

Then he saw a light, a small lamp one coming from the captain's office, no one was around. They must have been downstairs as not many homicide detectives were working; if any. So he moved to investigate, not connecting the dots because they were too farfetched.

"Captain?" Castle questioned in complete disbelief as he saw the woman propped up on her desk, tears in her eyes and a used tissue on her face. He was stunned; she was the captain, the strong scary woman who kept everyone else in line. Someone who did not cry.

"Mr Castle?" she seemed just as shocked but her emotions quickly deteriorated once more.

"What's wrong?" he asked, unsure of how to comfort this woman. She looked up,

"How do you do it?" she asked, taking a deep breath while mopping at her eyes. Rick just looked confused, what was she talking about?

"How do you cope seeing someone you love, with someone else?" she asked closing her eyes and wincing in unseen pain.

"You know?" he questioned, he thought it was a secret, that no one knew about his affection.

"Do you think I'm an idiot?" she demanded in a voice that would have been sarcastic in another situation. Instead she just buried her face in her hands, not wanting to show she was crying.

"I caught my husband with another woman, an officer from vice," Gates confessed with a deep sigh not looking up.

"It's already set, we're divorcing and I just wanted to know."

"I don't cope," he answered after a few long moments, she looked up. Bleary eyed.

"Every time I see Kate with Josh a little part of me dies. I don't cope, I try to just let it all out when she's gone," Rick confessed moving over and putting a hand on her shoulder, she leaned her head against him.

"Then why do you do it? Why not leave?" she asked

"Because what I do makes me feel like I'm doing something for the good," was his response.

For a few long moments they stood in silence, Gates tried to clean herself up

"Come on Captain," Castle muttered after a moment, she looked up confused.

"Look if we're going to be sad and lonely, we might as well do it together, I know a great place," He offered knowing she needed cheering up and he was not overly content with spending another evening cooped up at home.

Later

"Javier you've been staring at that menu for ten minutes, are you going to order?" Lanie asked looking at Esposito slightly disapprovingly. They had to wait a long time to reservations here and it seemed more of her evening was being spent watching him pick something to eat.

"Yeah, yeah one sec," he excused

"You said that ten minutes ago," she responded sounding somewhat annoyed.

"Ok ready." He confirmed looking slightly happy and ignorant of the state of his girlfriend.

"Took you long enough, and that's coming from someone who spends her work hours waiting for tests to come back," was her response but she was relieved to find his menu closed and them both descending into chatter. Though as the conversation progressed it started to feel like they had said all this before, even through dinner and drinks Lanie wanted something different. She wanted something exciting to happen.

"What are you staring at?" she demanded seeing her boyfriend gazing directly forwards and after looking down to make sure the girls weren't out she did start to wonder.

"Look behind you, don't make it obvious," he ordered.

"Oh this had better be good if you're going to...what the hell?" she said aloud but too loud, they didn't hear.

"Are you seeing this? Are you seeing this?" Esposito asked again and again, looking like he was seeing something impossible.

"No of course not, if I had seen something so shocking I would be drawing attention to it," was her dry reply but she couldn't help turning around to take another look. This was strange and she had no idea how Beckett was going to react.

"So has anyone won the pool do you think?" his voice pulled her out of her thoughts and into a scathing look.

"Javier! You see this and your thinking of money loss! Besides Beckett's married, the pool ended when she went off the market. Besides no one in the world would have guessed this." Lanie hissed unsure of how she should be feeling.

"But it's just,"

"I know," she finished "But let's not draw attention to it, or us!"

"Yeah let's do that, oh look the waiter's here," Esposito smiled,

"Yeah let's get dessert," Lanie agreed trying not to think about what she was seeing.

"Does this mean we call them Castle-Gates?" he suggested after a moment, looking over at the table.

"Shut up Javier!"

Later

"Thanks Mr... Rick I had a lovely time," Gates told him as he pulled up outside her house, her husband was evidently vacant.

"Me too, it was nice to get to know you," Castle answered, she had hated him for a while. A long while but it seemed that it was all water under the bridge now. She had warmed up to him anyway.

"And you, goodnight... Rick," she seemed slightly unused to saying that however feeling the need to transmit her shock she leaned forward and gently kissed him on the cheek. Then she was out of the car without a word.

"Bye," he heard her shout as he wondered what exactly had just happened.


	2. Chapter 2

Unrequited 

"So what have we got?" Beckett asked walking down one of the city's many dark alleys. Castle, Ryan and Esposito were already there, Castle having just arrived and was sipping his coffee. Though she noticed there wasn't a second in his hand

"A young white woman, cause of death was a bullet to the back of the head," Lanie muttered sounding puzzled as she inspected the scene.

"She's wearing a diamond bracelet," Kate muttered kneeling down to inspect the body. Indeed the woman was wearing a lot of fancy jewellery

"This is pretty high end stuff, what was she doing in a neighbourhood like this?" Castle wondered aloud.

"This is gang territory, could be a robbery gone attack," Esposito suggested looking around,

"Then why leave the diamonds?" Ryan questioned.

"Do we know what she was doing here?" Beckett asked looking around, she couldn't see much around. One back entrance to a closed restaurant and a graffiti covered wall signifying nothing more than a dead end.

"No, but she wasn't killed here, there's no blood splatter. She was dragged here," Lanie interrupted standing up,

"The killer must have driven, you don't drag a body through a street without someone noticing," Castle interjected suddenly.

"I'll canvass the area; maybe someone saw something out of the ordinary," Ryan announced turning his back on the scene.

"Ok, Espo see if any of the cameras around here caught anything," Beckett instructed suddenly.

"Cameras around here not being smashed of fake? That's one of those things that can just never happen," Esposito replied in a warning tone, his eyes then caught Lanie's.

"Well you never know I suppose, sometimes you can be surprised," he corrected but found himself receiving an even more infuriated glare as Beckett and Castle looked oblivious.

"I'll look at the cameras, it can't be that unlikely," he said loudly before quickly scuttling away.

"What was that about?" Kate asked looking at Lanie whose eyes quickly darted towards Rick.

"I have no idea," she replied mystically.

"Anything to do with your date?" Rick asked suddenly remembering the doctor and the detective had gone out last night. They had waited for reservations for quite a while.

"No, nothing to do with _our _date," Lanie answered quickly.

Later

"So we have an unknown victim, an unknown killer, unknown murder weapon and an unknown location for murder. I'm going to guess invisible killer," Castle decided looking at the mostly empty board in front of him.

"Really that's it? No UFO? Time travel? Or any of the usual stuff?" Ryan wondered sounding almost amazed, Castle nodded.

"Point taken invisible CIA hitman," was his next try.

"There's the Castle we know and love," Beckett smiled, having been ignoring the man for quite some time.

"Who loves Castle?" Esposito asked suddenly interjecting himself in the conversation

"Everyone," Rick answered with a smile; usually the word love would have had him feeling like he had been run over but for some reason he felt ok. Esposito however looked a mixture of worried and relieved.

"Is that Charlotte Ollisan?" a suddenly stern and alert voice sent shockwaves through the air as Gates approached. Walking with narrowed eyes and a fierce stare which was transfixed on the victim's image on the murder board, looking a mixture of shocked and furious.

"You know this woman sir?" Castle asked, both of them agreed they would stay professional, they could be friends but she did not want anyone being casual in addressing her or any superior.

"Yes I do, Charlotte Ollisan, wife of Paul Ollisan," she muttered with a slight growl.

"Wait you mean officer Ollisan as in _the _officer Ollisan?" Castle inquired, all eyes were on him.

"Yes I do Mr Castle," Gates muttered.

"And just who is officer Ollisan?" Esposito asked, feeling out of the loop all of a sudden as everyone wondered how Castle knew who this officer was.

"He's an officer, a captain now who has a long and difficult history, I knew him a long time ago," Gates muttered in a voice that sounded ready to kill.

"What do you mean long and difficult, sir," Beckett questioned with a slight glance at Castle,

"A number of charges were brought against him over the years, none of them stuck. Domestic abuse, harassment and assaulting an officer, all of them dropped for reasons which have escaped us all." She replied with a growl.

"We'll look into him sir," Kate assured the evidently angry woman in front of her who seemed unpredictable all of a sudden.

"Do," she muttered before turning on her heel and storming back towards her office. The moment she was gone all eyes were on Castle

"How the hell did you know about any of that?" Beckett demanded, Rick paused; trying to think of an answer.

"He's a friend of a friend I met once, I knew he didn't have a good record but didn't know he was married," he explained, his eyes darting towards the captains' office. Kate Beckett didn't look overly convinced.

"We can take a shot at him in the morning, it's late," Ryan decided before she could say anything and with a quick nod it was agreed.

Outside 

Captain Gates was going home early, normally she would work till late and recently she had been doing it to the extreme. After everything had happened with her husband she wanted to keep her mind as far away from it as she could. Though this new case was providing an unwelcome distraction,

"Need a lift?" Castle's voiced appeared from nowhere as he pulled over, it was cloudy and sooner or later it was going to rain. Once Gates would have said no and once Castle wouldn't have had the courage to pull over

"Thanks Rick," she smiled getting into the passenger seat.

"So how are you holding up?" he asked the moment they had set off, sounding worried.

"Fine," she answered quickly, she had no wish to think about it let alone talk about it.

"No I'm not," she sighed in the same moment. No she couldn't pretend, she was fine with breaking bad news, fine with tough decisions, hell she hadn't broken down in public after her husband but this she couldn't act through.

"You think he did it?" Rick asked and she appreciated him getting straight to the matter.

"When I first joined the force Paul Ollisan knocked my partner into the hospital for a week, he has friends and they pulled strings. He walked free, my partner walked out. That man pushed me to work for internal affairs. I hate that son of a bitch with every fibre of my being so yes Rick I do think he did it." Gates sighed sinking back in the car seat looking under pressure.

"We'll get him if he did it you know," Castle assured her and she smirked darkly.

"He's escaped justice every time," she corrected.

"Luck runs out," he countered as he pulled up outside her house. Her face fell.

"Who's that?" Rick asked seeing a foreign car and a strange woman outside the home.

"My husband and mother in law," Gates growled in a murderous tone "Obviously picking up whatever he left,"

"Well to stop a potential double murder I have a guest bedroom if you want to avoid them," Rick offered, it was late and judging from Gates' tone she was not going to enjoy their company.

"Anything but them,"


	3. Chapter 3

Unrequited 

She moved quickly and quietly, Alexis was hungry and she had invested her entire allowance in a ecological program, in hindsight it had been a bad idea but she really did believe in what she was doing. So she began sneaking food from home, just until she could get some more money and then she would repay her dad everything, then again knowing him he wouldn't let her. So she would have to sneak it in the same way she was doing now, silently opening the front door, creeping towards the fridge and then with one movement there was food for her.

"Trouble sleeping?" a curt unfamiliar voice asked, with a startled yelp Alexis jumped back from the fridge and hit the floor with a slight thump. She was then faced with a stern faced person with raised eyebrows looking down at her; she noticed she was wearing one of her gram's robes. It took a moment before she worked out who it was.

"Captain Gates?" Alexis questioned looking at the woman with an open mouth; there was no way this was happening. No this had to be dream, didn't she hate her father?

"Quite don't wake your dad up," she hushed looking faintly amused as she emptied a glass of water, so she was staying here but Alexis had no idea why. Well she had an idea why but she thought that was just impossible.

"Captain Gates?" Alexis whispered again wondering if she was indeed dreaming

"Yes that's me, wait aren't you supposed to be at college?" the woman questioned in a suspicious tone that left Alexis speechless for a few moments.

"I spent my allowance," she justified after a moment hoping the woman wouldn't probe further.

"Ah I see, and it's something your dad wouldn't approve of?" She guessed

"Well, it's a friend's charity and if I tell him he gives me the talk," Alexis answered, not realising she was justifying the thieving to herself rather than Gates.

"Fathers." the captain smirked, lost in some apparent memory of youth that Alexis thought best not ask.

"Wait, what are you doing here?" she blurted quickly, it took a few seconds for the captain to work out what the teenager thought.

"No, no, no! No, your dad let me stay here while my ex husband and mother in law gets his stuff," she quickly corrected looking alarmed, though not repulsed Alexis noticed before mentally slapping herself for even thinking that. Instead she breathed a sigh of relief,

"Sorry if I scared you, I needed a drink," Gates whispered after a moment realising the girl was not accustomed to seeing someone else in the house.

"It's fine," Alexis replied, then she saw the clock, it was late and she had a class in the morning.

"Oh I need to go,"

"Wait a moment," Gates ordered and Alexis froze, was the captain going to tell on her? Or lecture her? Meaning she lost even more hours she could be sleeping

"Your food, I think you might need it," Gates smiled handing over the paper bag Alexis brought with her to fill up.

The morning 

Richard Castle stared at his fridge, things had been going missing and he knew it wasn't him, or his mother seeing as most of it she didn't like.

"Mother have you seen the..."

"Richard you've asked me this question for the last two weeks, no I have not eaten whatever it is that has vanished," Martha sighed, her hand around a coffee and her eyes locked on an newspaper.

"Maybe Gates had them while she was here," he muttered. After a quick coffee the captain had needed to rush off for a meeting, luckily it was just before his mother woke up. She had got back late and up late thankfully,

"Wait what?" he had not spoken softly enough and was met with a shocked glare.

"Nothing,"

"Kiddo, I heard that and if I heard correctly you said Gates might have eaten whatever it is when she was here, now I knew you had a girl here last night. A mother knows but does this woman happen to be one Captain Victoria Gates?" Martha asked sharply looking intrigued.

"No! I mean well yes she was round but no!" he trailed off having locked himself in a corner, his mother just had a raised eyebrow.

"We didn't sleep together; I just let her stay here while her husband and his mother took his stuff from her house." Castle eventually finished. Martha considered for a few moments.

"Kiddo when are we going to stop this?" she asked softly after a moment with a sad smile. Her tone mournful and her eyes laced with pity, it was as if she didn't want to say what she was about say.

"Stop what?" Rick questioned unsure of what she was talking about. Was something wrong? With him? With her, he was worried as she spoke.

"Nine months ago I stood next to you when Kate said I do, I know you felt, you wanted to run up and kiss her, pull her away from him. But you didn't, you stood by and I'm not saying that was a bad thing but you did it. You need to move on," she sighed deeply.

Rick opened his mouth to speak but no words came out

"No wait, you love Beckett, I know you do but she chose the other man. I know it hurts believe me but I want you to be happy, you wouldn't just let anyone stay here."

"Whoa, whoa! I'm not trying to get with Gates, it's just gone through the same thing," he began but he was cut off.

"I'm sure a lot of people have and you wouldn't just let them occupy the guest bedroom. Richard think about it, you obviously like her. You had dinner with her and you came back happier than you've been in nine months, now whether it was date or not I'm just saying you could do with some happiness," Martha reasoned and for a moment her son was cast into silence.

"You've been torturing yourself day after day working with Beckett, knowing there was no chance of you two for a long while. You're clinging to her and you need to stop, then you can wake up and I don't know if you like Gates or whoever but you can find someone, You need to move on Richard, it has to happen and dragging it out will only make it worse for you,"

Moments passed, then minutes and Rick looked down at the floor. He knew she was right and when he looked up he sighed.

"Your right mother, as always," he smiled somewhat as he said this. However she did not smile, instead she just watched.

"Your right I can't do this anymore,"

"So what are you going to do?" Martha asked looking slightly happier. Rick took a deep breath

"I'm going to make this my last case, I want to help Gates get back at the person who wronged her all those years ago but then that's it. This will be my last case," he sighed deeply, not wanting to do it but knowing it was the only choice he really had.


End file.
